Re: I bought one of these for Christmas

If MS is pushing out the Windows 8/8.1 OS to these for free I would assume if they are in the manufacturers update cycle they would also get Windows 10 as long as MS still offers a free version for small/low power devices.

Checking my Amazon order list...

...would refute your claim for the UK at least.

240GB V300 Kingston SSD October 2013 - £104.00

240GB V300 Kingston SSD January 2015 - £73.00

A price drop of £31.00 or a drop of nearly 30% in just over a year. In the past six months alone I've been picking up 240GB SSDs for under £70 and even got one for £65! Even got 64GB SSDs for under £30.

The only tech pricing anomaly I've ever noticed is the price of DAB radios. How this clunky ancient tech isn't being sold for next to nothing mystifies me.

Re: IMHO it's all a con.

Re: IMHO it's all a con.

In those cases it's usually been the external wiring out from your house. It gets corroded.

Had many customers call me about their ADSL suddenly failing and nothing internal seems to fix it and BT India are hopeless (always ask to speak to a lLvel 2 Engineer, that does the trick). So I tell them to call out an engineer to check the 2-3 feet of external wiring and that usually does the trick.

Re: Good article

I remember back around the turn of the century when ADSL was on the horizon as the next big thing BT was stating in every tech site at the time that ISDN was pretty much all people would need and that they had little interest in pushing ADSL. Well what a surprise.

We had a 'forgotten' 128Kb ISDN link in our office for several years. We used to use it for streaming US radio into the office and a ghetto video conference setup we made (hey...perks were few and far between by then). No one ever asked about it. Probably still there long after we moved on 12+ years ago.

Re: About time councils put their foot down

Hmmm the Alcatel 'Snotblob'.

I remember thee. A great device for sorting out the men from the boys USB socket wise.

Basically if you had a VIA USB chipset you were screwed as it didn't push enough power to the snotblob. Spent many a lunch hour down Maplins hunting out NEC USB chipset PCI cards for friends.

When I had my ADSL installed in 2001 it was still a two engineer job. You had to have a ADSL box installed in the house. Was rather nice to have a proper purpose built box installed just where you wanted it in the living room. Much better than all the poor sods that had to put up with the splitter plugs in the hallway much later.

Still use the ADSL box today. However, the speed has improved. Back in 2001 it was a staggering 512Kb. Now it's a better 18Mbps and while I can get FTTC, I really can't be bothered. I'll wait till they move me over for nothing due to legacy needs.

Re: Bye Bye MS

Alternate releases

I've been thinking that if MS wants to push out an OS every 2 years or so then they should go to a alternate Domestic and Business release. That way you would get around 5 years between business releases (and domestic).

Also it would mean you wouldn't have to have too many unwanted features in either release.

Re: This is ridiculous

6-7 years is fairly normal. In a big corporation, you usually wait a year for a new OS to 'mature'. Then you spend a year configuring your builds. Then three years rolling the 20000+ items of kit etc. out.

Then another year doing mop ups. Then two years trying to get it all working.

Then you wait a year for the new OS to 'mature'...

Quite why MS has decided to go to a new OS every 2+ years cycle when their biggest customers move on a much longer time frame, I don't know.

One of the most memorable things I remember from TV in the 80's was watching the night Joan Rivers had Bernard Manning on that chat show with Cook as her weekly 'stooge' sitting on the end of the sofa.

Manning walks on, sits down, turns grinning to a grimacing Cook and says "What's the matter Peter? You're not being very funny tonight!"

Oh god yes....

...the Derek & Clive video is a once only watch. Like a car crash in painful slow motion.

Like watching a marriage break up. If you see it though, you can imagine that Cook could be a bully. He goads Moore throughout the session in a less than friendly manner. Sadness? Frustration at Moore soon to be departing across the pond leaving him behind? We'll never know.

Also it blows a few myths too. Moore turns up to the session with nothing more than a bag of fruit. Whereas Cook has a pile of notes/material ready to go. So not surprising Moore can only react and ad-lib to what Cook says on that occasion. Not as spontaneous/off the cuff as many have alluded to.

Don't know if that was the case for all the D&C sessions, possibly not.

Cook was still a genius and I was mortified this day 20 years ago. I can't remember who said it (possibly Fry actually) to crush criticism that Cook had wasted the last 20 years of his life but they said (iirc) "He didn't waste the last years of his life, he had just done everything he set out to do, far earlier than planned!"

Re: Aarrr!

Oh the adrenalin rush of Eve. I remember my 4 man corp being war-decced over our POS. We managed to get the POS down and take out two of their battleships with no losses on our side. None of us got any sleep that night, just shaking too much. We'd never fought a war before either.

Re: Thoughts

The big problem for the NHS is mainly inefficiency on the clerical side.

People can't make booking for when it's best for them. They advise the clerical person they will be on holiday for the first week of June and two weeks later when they get their appointment letter through it says...yes, it's the first week of June. Go back to Start.

The GP will say "You need to see biomechanics!" The person will try to book with biomechanics but will be pushed to chiropody due to the biomechanics list being too long (they only have one specialist). Person goes to see the chiropodist to be told they should see biomechanics and have to start the booking process again. Finally goes to see biomechanic and they don't have enough time to do the job properly so it just gets worse and more expensive over time. Person resorts to going private instead.

Many cases where treatment A is the best course of action but the patient for some reason has to go through treatments B, C and D due to the clerical dept's insistence/ineptitude before finally having to go back to treatment A.

In most cases the treatment is okay, it's the total clusterf**k of actually getting to that point that's the problem. Most non-medical people in the NHS just aren't smart enough for what's required.

Yeah I got the 64GB real cheap too a couple of years ago. I don't use it for web etc. now but its still an awesome music and video player and while the screen res isn't much the colour quality etc. is superb. As others mentioned the HDMI out boosts its media use.

A tablet from the time before they started cutting corners. Good for keeping in the car with some Disney/Pixer movies on for the kids.

Re: Suggestion for law enforcement

I live in a city centre so get a lot of anti-social thuggery going on.

I once said the to the Police Inspector in charge of the city centre night time crime division at a public forum that I thought it would be a good idea to have a couple of officers on a Friday/Saturday night do a tour of the roads and residential back streets from the main nightclubs areas like security guards do.

Basically just making sure folks knew there was a Police presence keeping an eye on the darker streets and lanes in the residential areas in an effort to reduce the anti-social goings on. Drunks get up to all sorts when they see a dark alley or lane off the main street.

She looked puzzled and stated "I do not want officers patrolling in areas where there is nothing going on!"

I replied "With all due respect but as a resident living in this difficult area, 'nothing going on' is exactly what I want!"

She had no clue about preventative policing. All she understood was clocking up figures to slap on monthly performance reports. Creating a safe, crime free area just did not compute with her.

Re: Taking away?

The sensible thing to have done would be to come clean and say "As only 357 websites have been created through this service than the planned 3,570,000 we created the infrastructure for, we felt it wasn't worth continuing!"

Re: I did watch Panorama

Quite right. All this 'monitoring' of communications for terrorism is all cobblers. It's the 1% being able to find/remove the future 'trouble makers' and dissenters that will stir up the masses to take back what's really theirs.

The 1% are terrified of a similar situation that happened in the old Soviet Union in the early 90's happening elsewhere. Mainly in the west.

You'll see in a few years we'll have laws that outlaw making fun of politicians and other such figures. Then soon after having differing political views will be classed as illegal or extremist.

If folks are willing to get upset and vote over smoke screen stuff like immigration that actually have zero effect on their lives, they'll vote for whatever they are told.

If Apple really really cared about workers conditions...

...then wouldn't they have their own western inspectors visiting or monitoring working and factory conditions as part of their 'caring' attitude? Making sure the contractors and workers are not being abused or exposed to risk.

Well it's what I would do if I really cared. After all I sure Apple could afford a team of people to do that.

However, it appears they do not, so really it all boils down to bulls*it PR stunts.

As mentioned by the previous poster, sure other companies use these same factories but they are not the ones going on record over and over again every time this comes up saying "oh we really really care!"